The Wandering God

17 Eclipse the Moon and Shame Flowers 3/3

閉月羞花
Bì yuè xiū huā
Shut out the moon shame the flowers.
Beauty so great it eclipses the moon and puts flowers to shame.

*~*~*~*~*~*

After we had returned Ermi to her brother, I was beginning to feel tired. I hoped the evening would soon come to an end.

"I'll walk the Second Prince and Ermi out," said Kageyama, turning to me. "Find Sanli so we can return to Chuanfang."

"How?" I asked. "I don't have your nose."

Kageyama sniffed, and pointed to a staircase leading up to a long row of balconies that overlooked the hall and the patio beyond. "I think he's up there somewhere," he said, before turning to follow after Zhangyu and Ermi.

As I was crossing the great hall to the balconies, someone bumped my arm.

"Oh, I'm ever so sorry," said the girl who had bumped me. Red vine wine from the glass she had been holding had sloshed all over my shawl and dress.

I looked down. Although my dress had only received a little of the splatter, and was red in addition, the shawl was ruined.

I took it off and beckoned to a servant. "Here, you may have this. Aside from the stain, it is good quality." I turned to go.

"I would be happy to buy you a new one," the girl who had bumped me said, doing her best to contain laughter. I looked her over. She wore a gown of extremely fine-looking silk in egg shell blue. Although I did not recognize her, a little way away, in the group of women she had been standing and talking with, I recognized my pink enemy, the youngest daughter of the Fa family. No doubt this was, indirectly, her doing.

I wondered if she had contributed to making Ermi cry as well.

"That is very kind of you," I said, stepping toward the girl who had spilled wine on me, smiling. "But I have many more shawls." My eyes were on the girl in peach silk as I spoke. "You should be careful, though. It looks like when we bumped, I must have ripped your dress."

"Where?" asked the girl in surprise, looking down.

"Here," I said. I took one of my beringed hands and brought it swiftly across her side. The sharp fitting of one of my rings caught the fine silk of her dress, ripping a long gash in the side.

The girl gasped in dismay and clutched her side to cover up the hole. I laughed, looking up to see the Fa girl in peach silks and the others watching. I smiled at them, my most ferocious smile, imagining my mouth full of sharp teeth, then turned and walked away, bare shouldered.

Following the kitsune's instructions, I climbed the stairs. Sure enough, I found Sanli on one of the balconies overlooking the terrace below and the ocean beyond. He sat on the ground, propped against a huge vase that contained an arrangement of pristine flowers all made from colored, shaped glass.

A near empty bottle of wine was beside him, and his cheeks were flushed.

"Drinking alone again Prince Sanli? How melancholic."

He looked up as I approached. "I'm hiding from all the unmarried women."

"You like your independence that much? Or is the prospect of marriage so repellant to you?" I said, stopping before him and leaning back on the stone balustrade.

"Both. And as you are not married, I hardly think you can lecture me." He brought one hand holding the wine cup to his lips and then tilted it back, downing the wine.

"I was married, once," I said, smirking down at the drunken prince.

"You were?" The surprise was clear on his face. He set down his cup.